Postoperative wound infections in a children's hospital.

A prospective study was made of postoperative wound infections at Milwaukee Children's Hospital for 1 year. Essentially all procedures requiring a skin incision were included. The clean surgical wound infection rate was 3.1% (26 infections in 849 cases). There were no significant differences in clean wound infection rates among the individual surgeons or among the four busiest surgical services. The occurrence of postoperative wound infections was associated with administration of prophylactic antibiotics, longer duration of surgical procedures and longer hospital stay before and after surgery. About 50% of patients having a clean surgical procedure were given prophylactic antibiotics. Prophylactic antibiotic were given for 4 days or more in about half the cases.